Thank you Frosty and Aroyok, exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

Additionally, can anyone say if he is viable at all in Dominion building more towards a pure AP caster? His ratios seem pretty solid with 70% of his AP on his Q, 50% on E and 60% on R. Maybe building the Abyssal Scepter 3rd and going from there as necessary?

For Galio, you need to build CDR no matter which route you take. That said, there's the odd time where your R>Q>E can burst someone down. Other than that, though, his main nuke is on too high of a cooldown for him to do much more than some very, very heavy poking.

He'd make a great tanky AP support imo...i'd categorize him in a similar category as Alistar, Blitz ect ect.

I found him to be decent at bot, but there are stronger picks. He just fails too much at 1v1.

Surprisingly, I found him to be a superb tower diver with his ult up. The damage reduction lets you tank it while you taunt the enemies, your teammates clean up. Garrison as needed as well.

Overall, he was okay fun, but not my first choice for effectiveness or entertainment.

Galio is terrible. His AP ratios are actually quite bad, with huuuge long cooldowns. So basically he doesn't do any damage. Sure you can load him up with a Frozen Heart and 4 negatrons (that youd eventually upgrade to odins, abyssal, quicksilver), and he would be fairly hard to kill. But he doesnt have any real threat or even any CC.
He cannot TAKE a node at all.

Alistar can defend several nodes and can punt enemies away, knock them up, and use his Ult to become extremely tough, plus heal himself slightly....all without any real equipment.

Theres several champs that can defend well, but dominion requires some mobility plus ability to take nodes as well as defend them. You dont want a champ that can only defend.

I've seen him once, very boring stalemate bottom lane vs. my Maokai.

IIRC, my team held windmill w/o issue, so it was just fairly boring standard 3cap win, without the need to swap up lanes.


In that situation, -and sort of his niche IMO- would be to swap up and dive/tank the tower for his team in an attempt to cap it. Odyn's Veil + Thornmail/Frozen Heart/Randuins at his core, over Abyssal. Both he and Mao create a situation that punishes opponents for being entrenched in their position. After either succeeding, or failing, swaps back to bottom lane until his cooldowns are up again.

I played him a fair bit on SR and have had a few goes on Dominion. He is great at pushing minions & can hold a tower resonably well but on all other parts of the game he feels lacking.

I play Galio a lot on SR but never tried him on Dominion, figuring I'd regret it like trying to use him on TT. But on paper, at least to me, he sounds like a solid choice. A slow, a massive shield that heals, a directionals speed buff, plus an AOE taunt, what more can you ask for? He will never budge from a point if he's got Spirit Visage though. He's really the deadlock champ, you can't push 1v1, but you also don't give ground 1v1. Although with practice, you can gain an edge on most champs.

I played a bit more Galio, but this time on top. He is hot mess at level 3...you really will sit there and watch your teammates die. But later on, once he gets some items going, he can just sit on whatever node he's at, and the enemy can't push him off without overwhelming force. In one match, our team took the enemy mid, and I just sat there holding the enemies off the node. If there were ever a Dominion meta involving a super stubborn defender, I think Galio would be a solid pick for it.

The key with Galio that early on for me is that I max his W first to keep my teammates alive longer. The damage I go for later in Dominion since that Bulwark gives them a huge amount of armor and MR. I've had times where teammate is getting pelted, Bulwarked, saved him to let him kill them